Personalised approach

“There is clear evidence that assessment impacts on students by helping them to make exceptional progress” “Assessment is focused and sets clear targets that relate to learning needs and engages students so they take action”

Peer and Self Assessment Focus : Low ability students

Activity 1: What barriers do lower ability students face when using peer/self assessment?

Activity 2: Have a look at the peer assessment example: –What are the weaknesses in this example of peer assessment? –Why are the outcomes not particularly successful? – Could the teacher have structured the activity differently to achieve a better set of outcomes?

Make the success criteria explicit – avoid too many targets and use a language students understand. Model how to peer assess work. Use an example and get the students to find where the targets have been met. Which ones haven’t? Collaboratively come up with a target for improvement.

Get the students to provide examples in their targets I really liked when you used statistics to back up your ideas e.g. “over 40 billion animals worldwide are confined in factory farming” Perhaps you could include more emotive language in your writing e.g. disgusting, horrific or unfair.

Try to use numbers. Get the students to write a smart ‘numerical’ target. Use a thesaurus to improve 5 adjectives. Use more than one student. Peer assessment doesn’t just have to be paired work. (Have a look at the Technology Example provided by Dan Bennett). Provide time for the students to ‘read’ any target that they set and try to improve on it Repeat the process regularly. Don’t expect them to get it first time.

Closing the Gap Focus: Personalising the activity to meet individual needs

To be formative, assessment must include a recipe for future action Assessment is formative only if the information fed back to the learner is used by the learner in making improvements

When feedback does not improve learning it is often because: It does not close the gap : just grades/marks; just praise/rewards (nationally this is the most common type of feedback); unclear; too general (‘more detail’). It is directed at the person not the task & does not provide information about how to improve

So we need to provide feedback along with an opportunity which allows the learner to close the gap between current and desired performance

Activity 3 Have a look at the pack of example ‘Closing the Gap Activities’ that have been used at SWCHS. Could any of these ideas be adapted to work in your subject area? Have you any other ideas that you could use in your own classroom?

Students have a personalised action that is specific and clear The Closing the Gap Activity is effectively timed; the biggest impact on student progression is when a student can immediately make progress from a piece of feedback To decide where to focus teacher support, a ‘confidence test’ determining whether a student feels able to independently act on a target could be undertaken (e.g. the ‘blob’ pictures could be used). This allows teacher time to be used efficiently.

There is support available for students who are less confident in being able to ‘close the gap’ (for example, this could be from: a teacher/LSA/peer, further resource such as a textbook, marking comments/notes or from a pre-prepared sheet scaffolding the next steps that a student needs to take) There is a separate ‘stretch and challenge’ extension activity ready for those students who have met expectations on a piece of work but are ready to improve beyond these